



v V 







ME. WINTIIROP'S ORATION 



I IsT A.U aXT R ^T I O N^ 



STATUE OF FRANKLIN, 



SEPTEMBER 17, 1856. 










ORATION 



THE INAUGURATION 



STATUE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 



IN HIS NATIVE CITY, 



SEPT. 17, 1856. 



HON. EGBERT C. WINTHROP. 



'L: 



- U.S.A. ^. 



<■' WaS- 



,.>rt^ 



BOSTON: 
PRESS OF T. R. MARVIN, 42 CONGRESS STREET. 

1850. 



/ 



OEATION 



We are assembled, Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citizens, to do honor to 
the memoiy of one, of wjiom it is little to say, that from the moment 
at which Boston first found a local habitation and a name on this 
Hemisphere — just two huaidred and twenty-six years ago to-day — 
down even to the present hour of her mature development and her 
meridian glory, she has given birth to no man of equal ability, of 
equal celebrity, or of equal claim upon the grateful remembrance and 
commemoration of his fellow-countrymen and of mankind. 

We come, on this birth-day of our ancient Metropolis, to decorate 
her municipal grounds with the image of that one of her native sons, 
whose name has shed the greatest lustre upon her history ; — proposing 
it as the appropriate frontispiece and figure-head, if I may so speak, 
of her Executive and Legislative Halls forever. 

We come, at this high noon of a new and noble exhibition of the 
products of New England industry and invention, to inaugurate a 
work of Art, in which the latest and best efforts of American genius 
and American skill are fitly and most felicitously embodied in the form 
and lineaments of the greatest American Mechanic and Philosopher. 

We come, on this anniversary of the very day on which the Consti- 
tution of the United States was adopted and signed, to commemorate 
a Statesman and Patriot, who was second to no one of his time in the 
services which he rendered to the cause of American Liberty and 
Independence, and whose privilege it was, at the advanced age of 
eighty years, to give his official sanction and signature to the hal- 
lowed Instrument, by which alone that Liberty and Independence 
could have been organized, administered and perpetuated. 

I hail the presence of this vast concourse of the People, — assem- 
bled in all the multiplied capacities and relations known to our polit- 
ical or our social state, — Mechanic, Mercantile and Agricultural, 
Literary, Scientific and Professional, Moral, Charitable and Religious, 
Civil, Military and Masonic, — not forgetting that " Legion of Honor," 
■which has decorated itself once more, for this occasion, with the 
McdSls which his considerate bounty provided for the scholastic tri- 



umphs of their boyhood, and which are justly prized by every one 
that wins and wears them, beyond all the insignia which Kings or 
Emperors could bestow, — I hail the presence of this countless 
multitude both of Citizens and of Strangers, from which nothing is 
wanting of dignity or distinction, of brilliancy or of grace, which 
office, honor, age, youth, beauty could impart, — as the welcome and 
most impressive evidence, that the day and the occasion are adequately 
appreciated by all who are privileged to witness them. 

" Thus strives a grateful Country to display 
The mighty debt which nothing can repay I " 

Our City and its environs have not, indeed, been left until now, 
Fellow-Citizens, wholly destitute of the decorations of sculpture. 
Washington, — first always to be commemorated by eveiy American 
community, — has long stood majestically within the inner shrine of 
our State Capitol, chiseled, as you know, by the celebrated Chantrey, 
from that pure white marble, which is the fittest emblem of the spot- 
less integrity and pre-eminent patriotism of a character, to which the 
history of mere humanity has hitherto furnished no parallel. 

BowDiTCH, our American La Place, has been seen for many years 
beneath the shades of Mount Auburn, portrayed with that air of pro- 
found thought and penetrating observation, which seems almost to 
give back to the effigy of bronze the power of piercing the skies and 
measuring the mechanism of the heavens, which only death could take 
away from the ever-honored original. 

Near him, in the beautiful Chapel of the same charming Cemetery, 
will soon be fitly gathered Representative Men of the four great peri- 
ods of Massachusetts history : — John Winthrop, for whom others 
may find the appropriate epithet and rightful designation, with the 
First Charter of Massachusetts in his hand ; — James Otis, that 
" flame of fire " against Writs of Assistance and all the other earliest 
manifestations of British aggression; — John Adams, ready to "sink 
or swim" in the cause of " Independence now and Independence for- 
ever"; — and Joseph Story, interpreting and administering, with 
mingled energy and sweetness, the Constitutisnal and Judicial system 
of our mature existence. Glorious Quaternion, illustrating and per- 
sonifying a more glorious career ! God grant that tliere may never be 
wanting a worthy successor to this brilliant series, and that the line 
of tlie great and good may be as unbroken in tlie future, as it has been 
in the past history of our beloved Commonwealth ! 

Primo avulso non deficit alter 

Aureus. 

Within the last year, also, the generosity and the genius of our 
city and country have been nobly combined, in adorning our sp^ious 
and admirable Music-Hail witli a grand embodiment of that exqui- 



site Composer, who would almost seem to have been rendered deaf to 
the noises of earth, that he miglit catch the very music of the spheres, 
and transfer it to the score of his magnificent symphonies. 

Nor do we forget, on this occasion, that the familiar and cherished 
presence of the greatest of the adopted sons of Massachusetts, is soon 
to greet us again on the Exchange, gladdening the sight of all who 
congregate there with the incomparable front of Daniel Webster. 

At the touch of native art, too, the youthful form of the martyred 
Warren is even now breaking forth from the votive block, to remind 
us afresh "how good and glorious it is to die for one's country." 

But for Benjamin Franklin, the greatest of bur native-born sons, 
and peculiarly the man of the People, has been reserved the eminent- 
ly appropriate distinction of forming the subject of the first Bronze, 
open-air, Statue, erected within the limits of the old peninsula of 
his birth, to ornament one of its most central thorouglifares, and to 
receive, and I had almost said to reciprocate, the daily salutations of 
all who pass through tliera. 

Nor can any one fail to recognize, I think, a peculiar fitness in the 
place which has been selected for this Statue. 

Go back with me, Fellow-Citizens, for a moment, to a period just 
one hundred and forty-two years ago, and let us picture to ourselves 
the very spot on which we are assembled, as it was in that olden 
time. Boston was then a little town, of hardly more than ten or 
twelve thousand inhabitants. Her Three Hills, now scarcely distin- 
guishable, were then her most conspicuous and characteristic feature, 
and I need hardly say that almost all the material objects which met 
the view of a Bostonian in this vicinity, at that day, must have been 
widely difierent from those which we are now privileged to look 
upon. No stately structures for City Councils or for Courts of Justice 
were then standing upon this site. There was no Horticultural Hall 
in front, delighting the eye and making the mouth water witli the 
exquisite flowers and luscious fruits of neighboring gardens and 
green-houses. There were no shops and stores, filled with the count- 
less fabrics of foreign and domestic labor, facing and flanking it on 
every side. Yet all was not different. The fathers and founders of 
Boston and of Massachusetts, — more than one, certainly, of the ear- 
liest ministers and earliest magistrates of the grand old Puritan 
Colony, — were slumbering then as tlicy are slumbering now, in their 
unadorned and humble graves at our side, in what was then little more 
than a village church-yard, — 

" Each in Jiis narrow cell forever laid j " — 

and yonder House of God, of about half its present proportions, was 
already casting its consecrated shadows over tlie mouldering turf 
which covered them. At the lower end of the sacred edifice, for the 



enlargement of which it was finally removed about the year 1748, 
thero might have been seen a plain wooden building of a story and 
a half in height, in which Ezekiel Cheever of immortal memory, — 
" the ancient and honorable Master of the Free School in Boston," — 
had exercised his magisterial functions for more than five-and-thirty 
years. He, too, at the date of which I am speaking, was freshly 
resting from his labors, liaving died, at the age of ninety-four, about 
six years previously, and having fully justified the quaint remark 
of Cotton Mather, that he " left off teaching only when mortality 
took him off." But tlie homely old School-house was still here, under 
the charge of one Mr. Nathaniel Williams, and among the younger 
boys who were daily seen bounding forth from its irksome confine- 
ment at the allotted hour, to play on the very Green on which 
we are now gathered, was one, who probably as little dreamed that 
he should ever be the subject of a commemoration or a statue, as 
the humblest of those five-and-twenty thousand children who are 
now receiving their education at the public expense within our city 
limits, and some of whom are at this moment so charmingly grouped 
around us ! 

Descended from a sturdy stock, which an original Tithe-Book, — re- 
cently discovered and sent over to his friend Mr. Everett, by one who finds 
so much delight himself, and furnishes so much delight to all the world, 
in dealing with the heroes and demigods of humanity, (Thomas Carlyle) 
— descended from a sturdy stock of blacksmiths, which this curious and 
precious relic enables us to trace distinctly back to their anvils and 
their forge-hammers, and to catch a glimpse of " their black knuckl es 
and their hobnailed shoes," more than two centuries ago, at the little 
village of Ecton, in Northamptonshire, Old England, — born, liimself, 
near the corner of our own Milk Street, only eight years before the 
scene I have just described, and baptized, with most significant punctu- 
ality, on the same day, in tlic Old South Meeting House, — he was now, 
indeed, a briglit, precocious youth, wlio could never remember a time 
when, he could not read, and his pious father and mother were already 
cherishing a purpose " to devote him to the service of the Church, as 
the tythe of their sons." So he had been sent to the Public Grammar 
School, (for Boston aftbrded but one, I believe, at that precise moment,) 
to get his education ; — but he continued there rather less than a single 
year, notwithstanding that " in that time (to use his own words) he 
had risen gradually from the middle of the class of that year to be at 
the head of the same class, and was removed into the next class, 
whence he was to be placed in tlie third at the end of the year." 
He was evidently a/n^i boy, — in more senses of the word tlian one, 
perhaps, — and his progress was quite too rapid for his father's purse, 
who could not contemplate the expense of giving him a College 
education. Accordingly, " he was talien away from the Grammar 



school, and sent to a school for writing and arithmetic kept by a then 
famous man, Mr. George Brownwcll, where he learned to write a 
good liand pretty soon, but failed entirely in arithmetic." 

And thus the little fellow disappeared from the play-ground on 
which we are now standing, and presently from all the opportunities 
of education which his native place supplied. Not long afterwards 
we trace him helping his father at soap-boiling and tallow-chandling 
at the sign of the Blue Ball, (now the Golden Ball,) at the corner of 
Union and Hanover Streets. Next we find him working his brother's 
printing press in Queen Street, now Court Street, and diversifying his 
labors as an apprentice witli the most diligent and devoted efforts to 
increase his information and improve his mind. Now and then we 
detect him writing a ballad, — " a Light House Tragedy," or " a Song 
about Blackboard, the pirate," — and hawking it through the streets, by 
way of pastime or to turn a penny. Now and then we discover him 
trying his pen most successfully at an anonymous article for his 
brotlier's Newspaper. Presently we see him, for a short time, at little 
more than si.\teen years of age, the ostensible and responsible Editor 
of tfiat Paper, and in the New England Courant, printed and sold in 
Queen Street, Boston, on the 11th day of February, >723, the name 
of Benjamin Franklin takes its place in fair, round capitals, — never 
again to be undistinguished while he lived, nor ever to bo unremem- 
bered in the history of New England or of the world. 

But circumstances in his domestic condition proved unpropitious 
to the further development of his destiny at home. His spirit was 
winged for a wider and bolder flight than discreet and prudent 
parents would be likely to encourage or to sanction. It was, 
certainly, altogether too soaring to be longer hampered by fra- 
ternal leading-strings, and it was soon found chafing at the wires 
of the domestic cage. Disgusted at last with the impediments 
which were thrown in his way, and yearning for an assertion of 
his personal independence, he slips the noose which binds him to 
his birth-place, and is suddenly found seeking his fortunes, under 
every discouragement, three or four hundred miles away from home or 
kindred or acquaintance. A lad of only seventeen, Franklin has dis- 
appeared not only from the old School House Green, but from Boston 
altogether. — But not forever. He has carried with bun a native energy, 
integrity, perseverance and self-reliance, which nothing could subdue 
or permanently repress. He has carried with him a double measure of 
the gristle and the grit which are the best ingredient and most pro- 
ductive yield of the ice and granite of New England. And now, 
Fellow-Citizens, commences a career, which for its varied and almost 
romantic incidents, for its uniform and brilliant success, and for its 
eminent public usefulness, can hardly be paralleled in the history of 
the human race. This is not the occasion for doing full justice to 



such a career. Even the barest and briefest allusion to the posts 
which were successively held, and the services to his country and to 
mankind which were successively rendered, by the Gheat Bosto- 
NiAN, would require far more time than can be appropriately consumed 
in these inaugural exercises. The most rapid outline is all I dare 
attempt. 

The Life of Franklin presents him in four several and separate 
relations to society, in each one of which he did enough to have filled 
up the full measure of a more than ordinary life, and to have secured 
for himself an imperishable renown with posterity. As we run over 
that life ever so cursorily, we see him first as a Mechanic, and the- 
son of a Mechanic, aiding his father for a year or two in his humble 
toil, and then taking upon himself, as by a Providential instinct, that 
profession of a Printer, in which he delighted to class himself to 
the latest hour of his life. You all remember, I doubt not, that when 
in the year 1788, at the age of eighty-two years, .he made that last 
Will and Testament, which Boston apprentices and Boston school- 
boys will never forget, nor ever remember without gratitude, he iom- 
menced it thus': — " I, Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, Printer, 
late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to 
the Court of France, now President of the State of Pennsylvania, do 
make and declare my last Will and TestEiment as follows." Before 
all other titles he placed that of his chosen craft, and deemed no des- 
ignation of himself complete, in which that was not foremost. In the 
midst of his highest distinctions, and while associated with statesmen 
and courtiers at home or abroad, he was proud to be found turning 
aside to talk, not merely with the Baskervilles and Strahans who 
were so long his chosen friends, but with the humbler laborers at the 
press — " entering into their schemes, and suggesting or aiding im- 
provements in their art." In the last year but one of his life, he 
writes to his sister — " I am too old to follow printing again myself, 
but loving the business, I have brought up my grandson Benjamin to 
it, and have built and furnished a printing-house for him, which he 
now manages under my own eye." He had an early and intense per- 
ception of the dignity and importance of that gi'eat engine for inform- 
ing and influencing the public opinion of the world, and a prophetic 
foresight of the vast and varied power which a Free Press was to 
exert, for good or for evil, in his own land, — and he seemed peculiarly 
anxious that his personal relations to it should never be forgotten. 

And they never will be forgotten. If Franklin had never been 
any thing else than a printer, if he had rendered no services to his 
country or to mankind but those which may fairly be classed under 
this department of his career, he would still have left a mark upon his 
age which could not have been mistaken or overlooked. It was as 



a /)nn<er that he set such an example to liis fellow-mechanics of all 
ages, of industry, temperance, anil frugality, — of truth, sincerity, 
and integrity. " The industry of that Franklin," said an eye-witness 
of his early habits, (Dr. Baird,) "is superior to anything I ever 
saw of the kind ; I see him still at work when I go home from 
Club, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of 
bed." And you all remember how the ale-drinking apprentices 
of London sneered at him as " the Water-American," and won- 
dered how one who drank no stroiig beer, could be so much stronger 
than themselves ! It was as a printer, that he instituted those Clubs 
for discussion and mutual improvement, which elevated the character 
and importance of the working classes wherever they were introduced. 
It was as a printer, that he displayed such extraordinary mechanical 
ingenuity, in making for himself whatever articles he needed in his own 
profession, founding letters of lead, carving ornaments and cuts of 
wood, engraving vignettes upon copper, mixing his own printer's ink, 
and manufacturing his own plate press. It was as a /)mi<£)', that he 
set on foot the first Subscription Circulating Library, " the mother of 
all in North America." It was as a printer, that he did so much to 
improve tlie character of the Newspaper Press of the American Colo- 
nies, asserting its liberty, discouraging its licentiousness, protesting 
against its being employed as an instrument of scandal, defamation 
and detraction, and exhibiting it as the wortliy and chosen vehicle of 
information, entertainment and instruction. It was as a printer, that 
he commenced and continued that series of delightful Essays, some- 
times political, sometimes historical, sometimes moral, sometimes 
satirical or playful, which are hardly inferior in wit and wisdom to the 
best papers of Johnson or of Addison, of the witty Dean of St. Pat- 
rick's or the genial Canon of St. Paul's,— and which would have 
secured and established the permanent literary reputation of their 
author, had no other monument of liis labors existed. It was as a 
printer, above all, that he prepared and published for so many years 
his immortal Almanac, under the name of Richard Saunders, with 
those inimitable proverbs, only second to those of Solomon, of which 
so many millions of copies, in almost every language and tongue 
known beneath the sun, have been scattered broadcast throughout the 
world, for the entertainment and instruction of young and old, rich 
and poor, wise and simple. When will ever Poor Richard be forgot- 
ten ! Or when will he ever be remembered without fresh admiration 
for the shrewd, sagacious common sense, which he poured forth with 
such charming good humor and in such exhaustless profusion ! 

Well may the Mechanics of Boston take the lead in every com- 
memoration of Benjamin Franklin,— as they have done in that of which 
this day witnesses the completion,- for it was as a Boston Mechanic 
2 



10 

that he laid the foundations, stroncr and deep, of a cliaractcr which no 
temptations or trials could ever shake, and of a fame which will know 
no limits but those of civilization, and no termination but that of time ! 

But the ingenuity and invention of Franklin, while they stooped to 
supply not merely every want which he encountered in his own pro- 
fession, but every want wliich he obseiTed in his relations with others, 
could not be confined within an_y mere mechanical limits, but demand- 
ed nothing less than the whole circle of art and nature for their dis- 
play. If nothing was too low for his care, neither was anything too 
lofty for his contemplation ; and as we run over liis life he stands 
before us in the character of a Philosopher, not less distinctly or 
less proudly than we have just seen him in the character of a Printer. 

It is with no little mterest that we recall his own statement, that it 
was in his native Boston that his curiosity was first excited in regard to 
the nature of that wonderful element, trom the investigation of wliich 
he was destined to derive his highest and most pervading celebrity. 
Here, in the year 1746, he received the earliest impressions upon the 
subject of electricity, and here, among the Bowdoins and Chauncys 
and Coopers and Qnincys and Winthrops of tliat day, he found 
some of the earliest and latest sympathizers and co-operators in his 
scientific as well as political pursuits. The gradual steps by which 
he advanced in his electrical researches are for the historian and 
biographer ; the transcendent result is familiar to you all. When 
Franklin had completed that grand and unparalleled discovery, — 
arresting the very thunder-bolts on their llaming circuit through 
the sky, challenging them forth from their chariots of fire, and 
compelling them to a reluctant revelation of the nature of their mys- 
terious, mighty energies,— he had reached a pinnacle of human glory 
which had not been approached by any man of his country or of his 
age. His fame was flashed from pole to pole over the whole habitable 
globe, and hardly a civilized region, over which a thunder-cloud ever 
pealed or rattled, was long left ignorant of the name of him, who had 
disarmed it of its shafts and stripped it of its terrors. 

The boldness and sublimity of the experiment, by which his theories 
were finally tested and confirmed, have never been surpassed, if they 
have ever been equalled, in the walks of science, and even the battle- 
fields of ancient or modern history may be explored in vain for a 
loftier exhibition of moral and physical heroism. 

See him going forth into the fields, with no attendant or witness 
but his own son, lest a failure should bring discredit, — not upon 
himself, for no man cared less for anything wliich might concern 
himself, — but upon the experiment he was about to try, and upon 
the tlieory which he knew must prove true in the end. See him 
calmly awaiting the gathering of the coming storm, and then lift- 



11 

ing liis little kite, with an iron point at tlic top of the stick 
and a steel key at the end of the hempen string, to draw delib- 
erately down npon his own head a full charge of the Artillery of 
Heaven ! See him, disappointed at first, but never despairing or 
doubting, applying his own knuckle to the key, — knocking, as it were, 
at the very gates of the mighty Thnndcrei^^ — and eagerly standing to 
receive that bolt, from which so many of us, even now that he has pro- 
vided so complete a shield, shrink away so often in terror ! A similar 
experiment is to cost the life of a distinguished Russian philosopher 
at St. Petersburg only a few montlis afterwards. Sliall Franklin's life 
be spared now .' Well has Mr. Everett suggested, in the words of 
another, that if that moment had been his last, " conscious of an im- 
mortal name, he must have felt that he could have been content." 
But the good providence of God, in which, as we sha,ll see, Franklin 
always trusted, permitted the cloud to emit but a single spark. 
That spark was enough. His theory is confirmed and verified. 
Henceforth, in the latest words of the dying Arago, Electricity is 
Franklin's. " To hira the world owes the knowledge which led to the 
Telegraph, the Electroplate, the Electrotype. Every fresh adaptation 
of electricity is a stone added to his monument. They are only im- 
provements of his bequest. Electricity is Franklin's." His name 
has, indeed, become immortal, but, thanks be to God, his life is still 
preserved for the best interests of his Country and for the welfare of 
the world. 

But the fame of Franklin as a philosopher rests not alone on his 
discoveries in any single department of natural history, and the bril- 
liancy of his electrical experiments must not be permitted to eclipse 
liis many other services to science. Nothing, indeed, within the 
range of philosophical inquiry, seemed to be beyond his eager and 
comprehensive grasp, and to the end of his long life he was yearly 
adding something to the stock of scientific knowledge. He delighted 
to employ himself in searching out the causes of the common opera- 
tions of nature, as well as of its more striking and remarkable phe- 
nomena. The principles of evaporation, the origin of the saltness of 
the sea and the formation of salt mines, the habitual commencement 
of North-Easterly storms at the South-East, the influence of oil in 
smoothing the waters and stilling the waves, and a hundred other sub- 
jects, at that time by no means familiar to the common understanding, 
were elaborately investigated and explained by him. Indeed, wherever 
he went, he was sure to find material for his inquisitive and penetra- 
ting mind. A badly heated room would furnish him with a motive for 
inventing a better stove, and a smoking chimney would give him no 
rest until he had studied the art of curing it. Did he visit Holland, — 
he is found learning from the boatmen that vessels propelled by an 



12 

equal force move more slowly in shoal than in deep water, and forth- 
with he engages in patient experiments to verify and illustrate the 
lesson, for the benefit of tliose who may be employed in constructing 
Canals. Did the bark in which he was crossing the ocean stop a day 
or two at Madeira, — he seizes the occasion to procure and write out a 
full account of its soil, climate, population and productions. And 
while the ship is in full sail, behold him from day to day the laughing- 
stock of the sailors, who probably regarded him as only a whimsical 
landlubber, while he sits upon the deck dipping his thennometer into 
successive tubs of water bailed out for the purpose, to ascertain by the 
differences of temperature the range and extent of the Gulf Stream, — 
and thus furnishing the basis of that Geography of the Seas, which 
has recently assumed so imposing a shape under the hands of the 
accomplished and enterprising Maury. 

No wonder that the great English historian of that period, the phi- 
losophic Hume, wrote to Franklin as he was leaving England to return 
home in 1762 : " I am sorry that you intend soon to leave our hemis- 
phere. America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, sugar, 
tobacco, indigo, &c. ; but you are the first philosopher, and indeed the 
first great man of letters for whom we are beholden to her." And 
most justly did Sir Humphrey Davy say of him at a later day — " He 
has in no instance exhibited tliat false dignity, by which philosophy 
is kept aloof from common applications ; and he has sought rather to 
make her a useful inmate and servant in the common habitations of 
man, than to preserve her merely as an object of admiration in tem- 
ples and palaces." Indeed, his merits as a philosopher were early and 
every where recognized and acknowledged, and our Boston Printer 
was introduced and welcomed into Royal Societies, and Imperial 
Academies and Institutes, in almost every kingdom on the globe. 

Nor were his scientific attainments recognized only by diplomas 
and titular distinctions. It is pleasant to remember that the great 
British Powder Magazines at Purflect, and the magnificent Cathedral 
of St. Paul's, were both protected from the danger of lightning by 
rods arranged under Franklin's immediate direction ; while some years 
later, (1784,) the King of France placed him at the head of a com- 
mission of nine members of the Royal Academy and Faculty of 
Medicine, to investigate the subject of Animal Magnetism, tlien first 
introduced to the notice of the world by the celebrated Mesmer. 

In running over the marvelous career of Benjamin Franklin, we 
hail him next, in the third place, as a Statesman and Patriot, 
second to no one of his time in the variety and success of his eflibrts to 
build up the institutions of our country, botli state and national, and 
in promoting and establishing her Union and her Independence. 



13 

Frunklinmade his first formal appearance on the political stage, at 
the age of thirty years, in the humble capacity of Clerk of the Gene- 
ral Assembly of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, in the year 1736. But 
liis thoughts being now turned to public affairs, he at once com- 
menced instituting reforms, wherever an opportunity presented itself. 
Nothing which could contribute to the welfare of the community in 
which he lived, was too seemingly insignificant for his attention. The 
regulation of the City Watch, the paving and sweeping and lighting 
of the Streets, the organization of Fire Companies, the foundation of 
Schools and Academies, successively occupied his earliest care. 
His fitness for every sort of public employment soon becoming mani- 
fest, he was spared from no service within the gift either of the 
Executive or of the People. In the single year 1750, while he 
was just commencing his philosophical pursuits, he was called upon 
to discharge the duties of a Justice of the Peace, (no sinecure 
in that day,) by the Governor ; of a Common Councilman, and 
then an Alderman, by the Corporation of Philadelphia ; and of a 
Burgess, to represent them in the State Assembly, by his fellow- 
citizens at large. The next year finds him delegated as a Commis- 
sioner to treat with the Indians. The next year, he is appointed joint 
Post Master General of the Colonies. The following year, — the ever 
memorable year of 1754, — he is one of a Congress of Commissioners 
from all the colonies at Albany, to confer with the Chiefs of the 
Six Nations concerning the means of defending the country 
from a threatened invasion by France. And then and there, in 
that capacity, our Boston printer first projected and proposed a Union 
of all the colonies under one government, — the original suggestion 
of that glo/ious Union which was afterwards adopted as a defence 
against the tyrannical oppression of Great Britain, and which is still 
our best and only defence, not only against Great Britain and all the 
rest of the world, but against each other, and against ourselves, too. 
God grant that this Union may be no less durable than the solid 
bronze of which tlie Statue of its earliest proposer and constant 
advocate is composed, — defying alike the corrosions of time, the shock 
of strife, and the convulsions of every evil element ! 

The next year, 1755, we see him procuring wagons for General 
Braddock, who had Utterly failed to procure them by any other agency, 
and advancing for the service upwards of a thousand pounds sterling 
out of his own pocket. And then, too, it was, that with a sagacity so 
remarkable, he distinctly predicted the precise ambuscade which 
resulted in the disastrous defeat of that ill-starred expedition. Before 
the close of the same year, we find him marching himself, at the head 
of a body of troops, to protect the frontier, — not waiting, I presume, 
to be formally commissioned as Commander, since it is not until the 
succeeding year, 1756, — just one hundred years ago, — that we see him 



14 

regularly sworn in as Colonel, and learn that several glasses of his 
electrical apparatus were shaken, down and broken, by the volleys fired 
under his windows, as a salute after the first review of his Regiment. 

Passing over the six or seven next years, which belong to another 
department of his career, we find him in 1763, sole Postmaster General 
of British North America, and spending five or six mouths in traveling 
through the Northern Colonies in an old-fashioned gig, for the purpose 
of inspecting and arranging the Post OtBces. Soon afterwards we 
see him taking a leading part in stopping the tide of insurrection and 
quieting the commotions arising out of the inhuman massacre of the 
Indians in Lancaster County, — appealing to the people in an eloquent 
and masterly pamphlet, organizing a Military Association, and by liia 
personal exertions and influence strengthening the arm of Government 
and upholding the supremacy of the Laws. And now, in 1764, we 
welcome him, assuming the chair as Speaker of the Pennsylvania 
Assembly, to sign a bold Petition to the King against the Proprietary 
Government which he had drafted and defended on the floor, but to 
which the previous Speaker had shrunk from affixing his signature. 

Passing over another interval of a little more than ten years, (to be 
the subject of separate allusion under another view of his services,) 
we meet him next, on his own soil, in 1775, as a Delegate from Penn- 
sylvania to the Second Continental Congress. He serves simultane- 
ously as chairman of the Committee of Safety appointed by the Penn- 
sylvania Assembly. " In the morning at 6 o'clock, (says he of this 
period, and he was then sixty-nine years of age,) I am at tlie Commit- 
tee of Safety, which Committee holds till near 9, when I am at Con- 
gress, and that sits till after 4 in the afternoon." In the Continental 
Congress, we find him successively proposing a plan of Confederation ; 
assuming the entire management of tlie American Post Office ; at the 
liead of the Commissioners for Indian Affairs ; a leading member of 
the Committee of Secret Correspondence, and of almost every other 
Committee, whether for secret or foj open negotiations ; a Delegate 
to the American Camp at Cambridge, to consult with Washington and 
the Continental Army for the relief of his native town ; a Delegate 
to Canada, to concert measures of sympathy and succor ; and finally, 
one of the illustrious Committee of Five, with Tliomas Jefferson, and 
John Adams, and Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston, to draft 
the Declaration of Independence. That Declaration is reported and 
adopted, and Franklin signs it in his order with an untrembling hand. 
He would seem, however, to have fully realized the momentous char- 
acter of the act, when he humorously replied to our own John Han- 
cock, who had said — ' There must be no pulling different ways, we 
must all hang together;' " Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, 
or most assuredly we shall all Iiang separately." He was as ready to 
brave the strokes of arbitrary Power, as lie liad been those of the 



15 

lightning of Heaven, — to snatch the sceptre from tyrants as the 
thunder-bolt from the clouds ; and he might almost seem to have 
adopted, as the motto of his life, those noble lines of a cotemporary 
Poet— 

*Thy spirit, Independence, let me share ! 

Lord of the lion heart and eajle eye, 
Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare, 
Nor heed the storm which howls along the sky ! * 

And now he presides over the Convention which frames the Con- 
stitution of Pennsylvania ; and, after another interval of about eight . 
years and a half, (to be accounted for presently,) we see Iiim presiding 
over the State itself, whose Constitution he had thus aided in forming. 
Now, too, at the age of eighty, the Nestor of America, as he was 
well styled by the National Assembly of France, he is found among 
the DeWates to the Convention which framed the Constitution of the 
UnitedTstatcs, and there we may hear him making two brief but most 
characteristic and remarkable speeches. One of them I reserve for 
the conclusion of this Address. The other was delivered on the 
28th day of June, 1787, when he submitted that memorable motion, — 
seconded by Roger Sherman, and said by at least one member of the 
Convention to have been rejected only because they had no funds for 
meeting the expense, but which, at any rate, found only three or four 
voices to sustain it,— that "henceforth Prayers, imploring the assist- 
ance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in 
this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business." 

" I have lived, Sir, (said he most nobly,) a long time, and the longer 
I live, the more convincing proofs I sec of this truth — tJuit God governs 
in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground 
without his notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his 
aid ? We have been assured. Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that 
' e.Ncopt the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.' I 
firmly believe this ; and I also believe that without his concurring aid 
wo shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders 
of Babel. We shall be divided by our little partial local interests ; 
our projects will be confounded ; and we ourselves shall become a 
reproach and a by-word down to future ages. And what is worse, 
mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of 
establishing governments by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, 
war, and conquest." 

Glorious words ! Precious testimony ! Admirable example ! The 
wisest and most venerable of all that wise and venerable Assembly, 
full of the largest and richest and most varied experience ; full, too, 
of the fruits of the most profaund scientific and philosophical re- 
search, — even he that had ' divided a way for the lightnings,' ' send- 
ing them that they might go, and say unto him, Here we are,' — 



16 

publicly acknowledging the utter insufficiency of all human wisdom, 
and calling upon his associates to unite with him in " humbly apply- 
ing to the Father of Lights to illuminate their understandings ! " 

Who shall say, that if inequalities, or injustices, or imperfections 
of any sort, exist in the great work of that Convention, which even 
now may threaten its overthrow, — which oven now may involve 
us in the danger of being " divided by our little partial local inter- 
ests " and of encountering the fate of "the builders of Babel," — 
who shall say that the adoption of Franklin's Resolution might not 
have averted such a result ? And who shall doubt that, if, in the 
future administration of that cherished Instrument, all human wisdom 
shall again be found signally at fault, as it is found at this hour, the 
humble prostration of a whole people, Governors and governed, in 
prayer to God, for that most neglected of all subjects of prayer — the 
preservation of our Country and its Constitution, its Union and its 
Liberty, — might not be a more effectual safeguard, than all tKe brawl- 
ings and bickerings and wrestlings and wranglings of self-relying and 
self-magnifying politicians I 

We could all have wished, my friends, that Franklin had been a 
more earnest student of the Gospel of Christ ; but the devout reliance 
upon a superintending Providence, attested by frequent prayer, which 
characterized him from his youth upwards, and which never failed him 
in private or in public life, — his intimacy with Whitefield and with 
the "Good Bishop" of St. Asaph, — his earnest religious advice to his 
daughter, and his strenuous remonstrance against the infidel publi- 
cations of Paine, — furnish ample evidence of a reverence for sacred 
things and solemn observances, which might well put to shame the 
indifference of not a few of those, who may be most disposed to cavil 
about his views of Christianity. 

But there is another phase to this many-sided and mighty'mind, 
and the Great Bostonian stands before us, in the fourth place, as a 
Diplomatic Agent and Ambassador in Foreign Lands ; — a charac- 
ter in which he rendered services of inestimable value to the separate 
Colonies and to the whole Country, and secured a renown quite inde- 
pendent of that which he had achieved as a Mechanic, a Philosopher, 
or a Statesman, and by no means inferior to either. 

Franklin spent no less than twenty-six years of his mature life in 
other lands, all but two of them in public employment. He was more 
than five years in London, between 1757 and 17C3, as Agent of Penn- 
sylvania to attend to that Petition to the King, which he had been 
appointed Speaker to sign. His fame as a Philosopher and a writer 
had even then preceded him. He had already been made a member 
of the Royal Society, and had received the Medal of Sir Godfrey 
Copley. His mission at this time, however, gave but little scope for 



17 

brilliant service, though it has been said on good autliority that the 
British Expedition against Canada, with its memorable results in the 
victory of Wolfe and the conquest of Quebec, may be chiefly ascribed 
to his earnest recommendation of that particular policy to the British 
Ministry of that day. 

His second and more important visit to London, in a public capacity, 
extended from the close of the year 17G4, to May, 1775. He went at 
first, as before, only as Agent for Pennsylvania, but soon received 
commissions as Agent for Georgia, for New Jersey, and for our own 
Massachusetts Assembly. Arriving at the very era of the Stamp Act, 
his whole residence in England, of more than ten years, was crowded 
with incidents of the most interesting and exciting character. If no 
other memorial existed of Franklin's wisdom, courage and patriotism, 
than the single record of his extraordinary Examination before the 
House of Commons, at the beginning of the year 1766, the Statue 
which we are about to inaugurate would have an ample justification to 
every American eye, and in every American heart. If any one desires 
to obtain a vivid impression of the surpassing qualities of this wonder- 
ful man, — of his fullness of information, of his firmness of purpose, of 
his wit, prudence and indomitable presence of mind, of his true dig- 
nity and patriotic devotedncss of character, — let him read tliis Exam- 
ination as contained in his published works. It has often seemed to 
me incredible that such replies could have been, as we know they 
were, in so great a degree unpremeditated. There is a dramatic power, 
a condensed energy, a mingled force and felicity of expression, with 
an unhesitating mastery of resources, in Franklin's share of this famous 
Dialogue, which would alone have secured him no second place among 
the remarkable men of his age. This was the scene of his glory and 
his pride. But he was no stranger to the other side of the picture. 
He knew how to be humbled as well as how to be exalted, how to be 
silent as well as how to answer. And that subsequent scene in the 
Privy Council Chamber, on the 11th of January, 1774, when he stood 
as the " butt of invective ribaldry for near an hour," and bore without 
flinching, in his capacity of Agent of Massachusetts, a treatment so 
indecent and ignominious, will be remembered by every true-hearted 
American, to the latest generation, as a triumph no less proud and 
glorious. 

Another year attests the estimation in which he is held by 
the greatest figure of that memorable period of English history, when 
the peerless peer— the incomparable Chatham — not only introduced 
him personally into the House of Lords, to listen to his burning words 
on a motion to withdraw the Troops from the Town of Boston, but 
soon afterwards, on being reproached with taking counsel of Franklin, 
"made no scruple to declare, that if he were the first minister of the 
3 



18 

country, and had the care of settling this momentous business, he 
should not be ashamed of publicly calling to liis assistance a person 
so perfectly acquainted with tlie whole of American Aflairs as the 
gentleman alluded to, and so injuriously reflected on; — one, whom all 
Europe held in high estimation for his knowledge and wisdom, and 
ranked with our Boyles and Newtons ; who was an honor not to the 
English nation only, but to human nature." 

But by far the greatest of Franklin's services in foreign employment 
remain still to be recounted. It is not too much to say, that the early 
success of our Revolutionary struggle was mainly attributable to the 
generous and magnanimous aid afforded us by France. Let us never 
forget the magnitude of our indebtedness to her for that noble inter- 
vention, and let the remembrance of it serve to temper the animosities 
and soften the asperities which may at any time spring up in our 
intercourse with her people or her rulers, — inclining us ever to nrain- 
tain the kindest and most amicable relations with both. But let us 
never fail to remember that for the French Alliance, with all its 
advantages and aids, our country was indebted, more than to any or 
all other causes, to the character, the influence and the efforts of 
Benjamin Franklin. His celebrity as a philosopher, a man of letters, 
a statesman, and a bold defender of his country's rights and liberties, 
prepared the way for him. The intelligence, information and lofty 
independence he had displayed during his recent Examination before 
the British Commons, and the unflinching firmness with which he had 
borne the abuse which liad been heaped upon him at the Bar of the 
British Council, had excited the warmest admiration and sympathy on 
the other side of the Channel. Everything in his age, appearance 
and reputation conspired to render him an object of interest, attention 
and enthusiastic regard. It might be said of his arrival at Paris, as 
Cicero said of the arrival of Archias at some of the cities of ancient 
Greece, " Sic ejus adventus cdebrabatur, vf famam ingenii exspedatio 
hominis, exspedationeiii ij>sius (idvcntus admiralioque superard." 

Nothing could be more striking than the account whicli an eminent 
French Historian has given of this advent : — " By the effect which 
Franklin produced in France, we might say that he fulfilled his 
mission, not with a Court, but with a free people. * * Men imagined 
they saw in him a Sage of antiquity come back to give austere 
lessons and generous examples to the moderns. They personified in 
him the Republic of which ho was the Representative and the Legis- 
lator. * * His virtues and his renown negotiated for him ; and before 
the second year of his mission had expired, no one conceived it 
possible to refuse fleets and an army to the compatriots of Franklin." 
Undoubtedly at that era, and in that Capital, Franklin was the 
great American name. The mild but steady lustre of Washington's 



19 

surpassing character had not yet broken forth full-orbed on the admi- 
ration of the European world, as it was destined to do no long time 
afterwards. With that character at this day we admit no comparison. 
But our Boston printer was the very first of whom it might then have 
been said, in language since applied to others, that his name alone 
made our country respectable throughout the world ; and when he 
signed that Treaty of Alliance with France, on the fith of February, 
1778, he had accomplished a work which will ever entitle him to be 
counted as the Negotiator of the most important, as well as of the 
very first, Treaty to which this country has ever been a party. Tliis 
Treaty of Alliance was, indeed, the immediate and most effective 
instrument of that other and still more memorable Treaty, which he 
was privileged also to sign at Paris, four or five years afterwards, in 
company with his illustrious associates, Joh.v Adams and Johv Jay, — 
the Treaty of Peace and Independence with Great Britain, by which 
the War of Revolution was at length happily and gloriously termi- 
nated, and by which the United States of America were at last 
admitted to an equal place in the great brotherhood of Nations. 

Many more Treaties received his attention and his signature, with 
those of his illustrious associates, during the same period ; — one of 
amity and commerce with France, one with Sweden, and one with 
Prussia, in which latter he succeeded in procuring admission for that 
noble stipulation against privateering, — which, whether it be expedi- 
ent or inexpedient for the particular circumstances of our country at 
the present moment, must commend itself as a matter of principle 
and justice to the whole Christian world. The late Congress of Peace 
at Paris has substantially revived and adopted this article on the 
very spot on which it was drafted and defended by Franklin eighty 
years ago, — uniting it, too, with that great American doctrine, that 
free ships shall make free goods, which found in Franklin, on the 
same occasion, one of its earliest and ablest advocates. 

And these were the acts of a man more than threescore-and-ten 
years old, wearied vnth service and racked with disease, and praying 
to be suffered to return home and recover his strength, before he should 
go hence and be no more seon,^but whose retirement Congress was 
unwilling to allow ! In his early youth, however, he had adopted the 
maxim " never to ask, never to refuse, and never to resign '' any office 
for which others might think him fit, and he bravely persevered till all 
was accomplished. 

May I not safely say, Fellow-Citizens, that had Benjamin Franklin 
left no record of his public service, but that which contains the story 
of his career as a Foreign Agent and Minister, whether of separate 
Colonies or of the whole Country, after he had already completed the 
allotted term of human existence, he would still have richly merited 
a Statue in the Squares of his native City, and a niche in the hearts 



20 

of all her people, as one of the great American Negotiators and 
Diplomatists of our Revolutionary age ? 

And now, my Friends, over and above the four distinct and sep- 
arate phases of his life and history, which I have thus imperfectly 
delineated, but which are to find a worthier and more permanent por- 
trayal on the four panels of the pedestal before you, — over and above 
them all, at once tlie crowning glory of his career and the keystone to 
its admirable unity, blending and binding together all the fragmentary 
services which he rendered in widely ditfering spheres of duty into 
one proportionate and noble life, — over and above them all, like some 
gilded and glorious dome over columns and arches and porticoes of 
varied but massive and magnificent architecture, rises the cliaracter 
of Franklin for Benevolence ; that character whicli pervaded his whole 
existence, animating every step of its progress, and entitling him to 
the preeminent distinction of a true Philanthropist. 

Happening, by the purest accident, let me rather say, by some Prov- 
idential direction, to have read in his earliest youth an Essay written 
by another celebrated son of Boston, (Cotton Mather,) upon "the 
Good that is to be devised and designed by tliose who desire to 
answer the great end of Life," he dedicated himself at once to 
" a perpetual endeavor to do good in the world." He read in 
that little volume such golden sentences as these : — " It is possi- 
ble that the wisdom of a poor man may start a proposal that 
may serve a city, save a nation." " A mean mechanic — who can 
tell what an engine of good he may be, if humbly and wisely 
applied unto it ! " " The remembrance of having been the man that 
first moved a good law, were better than a statue erected for one's 
memory." These and many other passages of that precious little 
volume sunk deep into his mind, and gave the turn to tlie whole 
current of his career. Writing to "his honored mother " at the age 
of forty-three, he says, " for my own part, at present, I pass my time 
agreeably enough. I enjoy, through mercy, a tolerable share of 
health. I read a great deal, ride a little, do a little business for 
myself, now and then for others, retire when I can, and go into com- 
pany when I please ; so the years roll round, and the last will come, 
when I would rather have it said, ' He lived usefully,' than ' He died 
rich.'" Writing to the son of Cotton Mather, within a few years of 
his own dcatli (1784), and after he had achieved a world-wide celeb- 
rity as a Philosopher, a Statesman and a Patriot, he nobly says, in 
reference to the " Essays to do Good," — " I have always set a greater 
value on the character of a Doer of Good, than on any other kind of 
reputation ; and if I have been, as you seem to think, a useful citizen, 
the public owes the advantage of it to that book." 

And certainly if any man of liis age, or of almost any other age, 



21 

ever earned the reputation of a doer of good, and of having lived 
usefully, it was Benjamin Franklin. No life was ever more eminently 
and practically a useful life than his. Capable of the greatest things, 
he condescended to the humblest. He never sat down to make himself 
famous. He never secluded himself from the common walks and 
duties of society in order to accomplish a great reputation, much less to 
accumulate a great fortune. He wrote no elaborate histories, or learned 
treatises, or stately tomes. Short essays or tracts, thrown off at a 
heat to answer an immediate end, — letters to his associates in science 
or in politics, — letters to his family and friends, — these make up the 
great bulk of his literary productions ; and, under the admirable 
editorship of Mr. Sparks, nine noble volumes do they fill, — abound- 
ing in evidences of a wisdom, sagacity, ingenuity, diligence, fresh- 
ness of thought, fullness of information, comprehensiveness of reach, 
and devotcdness of purpose, such as are rarely to be found associated 
in any single man. Wherever he found anything to be done, he did 
it ; anything to be investigated, he investigated it ; anything to be 
invented or discovered, he forthwith tried to invent or discover it, and 
almost always succeeded. He did everything as if his whole atten- 
tion in life had been given to that one tiling. And thus while he did 
enough in literature to be classed among the great Writers of his day ; 
enough in invention and science to secure him the reputation of a 
great Philosopher ; enough in domestic politics to win the title of a 
great Statesman ; enough in foreign negotiations to merit tlie desig- 
nation of a great Diplomatist ; he found time to do enough, also, in 
works of general utility, humanity and benevolence, to insure him a 
perpetual memory as a great Philanthropist. 

No form of personal suffering or social evil escaped his attention, 
or appealed in vain for such relief or remedy as his prudence could 
suggest or his purse supply. From that day of his early youth, when, 
a wanderer from his home and friends in a strange place, he was seen 
sharing his rolls with a poor woman and child, — to the last act of his 
public life, when he signed that well known Memorial to Congress, as 
President of the Anti-Slavery Society of Pennsylvania, a spirit of 
earnest and practical benevolence runs like a golden thread along his 
whole career. Would to Heaven that he could have looked earlier at 
that great evil which he looked at last, and that the practical resources 
and marvelous sagacity of his mighty intellect could have been 
brought seasonably to bear upon the solution of a problem, now 
almost too intricate for any human faculties ! Would to Heaven that 
he could have tasked his invention for a mode of drawing the fires 
safely from that portentous cloud, — in his day, indeed, hardly bigger 
tlian a man's hand, — but which is now blackening the whole sky, and 
threatening to rend asunder that noble fabric of Union, of which he 
himself proposed the earliest model ! 



22 

To his native place, which is now about to honor him afresh, Frank- 
lin never failed to manifest the warmest regard and affection. Never 
forgetting that " he owed his first instructions in literature to the free 
grammar schools established there," he made a provision by his Will 
which will render him a sort of Patron Saint to Boston school-boys to 
the latest generation. Never forgetting the difficulties under which 
he had struggled, as a Boston apprentice, he has left ample testimony 
of his desire to relieve Boston apprentices from similar trials in all 
time to come. At all periods of his life, he evinced the liveliest inter- 
est in the welfare of his birth-place, and the kindest feelings to its 
citizens, and the day is certain to arrive, though we of this genera- 
tion may not live to see it, when his native city and his native state 
may owe some of their noblest improvements and most magnificent 
public works to a fund which he established with that ultimate de- 
sign. Here, in yonder Granary grave-yard, his father and mother 
were buried, and here he ' placed a stone, in filial regard to their 
memory,' with an inscription commemorative of their goodness. The 
kindness and honors of other cities could not altogether wean him from 
such associations. As he approached the close of his long and event- 
ful career, his heart seemed to turn with a fresh yearning to the grave 
of his parents, the scenes of his childhood, and the friends of his early 
years. Writing to Dr. Cooper, on the 15th May, 1781, he says, "I 
often form pleasing imaginations of the pleasure I should enjoy as a 
private person among my friends and compatriots in my native Boston. 
God only knows whether this pleasure is reserved for me." Writing 
to his sister on the 4th November, 1787, he says, "It was my intention 
to decline serving another year as President, that I might be at liberty 
to take a trip to Boston in the spring ; but I submit to the unanimous 
voice of my country, which has again placed me in the chair." Writ- 
ing to the Rev. Dr. Lathrop, on the 31st of May, J788, he says, "It 
would certainly, as you observe, be a very great pleasure to me, if I 
could once again visit my native town, and walk over the grounds I 
used to frequent when a boy, and when I enjoyed many of tlic inno- 
cent pleasures of youth, which would so be brought to my remem- 
brance, and where I might find some of my old acquaintances to con- 
verse with. * * But I enjoy the company and conversation of any 
of its inhabitants, when any of them are so good as to visit me ; for, 
besides their general good sense, which I value, the Boston manner, 
turn of phrase, and even tone of voice and accent in pronunciation, 
all please, and seem to refresh and revive me." But the most striking 
testimony of his attachment to the scenes of his birth is found in the 
letter to Dr. Samuel Mather, on the 12th May, 1784, from which I 
have already quoted, where he says, "I long much to see again my 
native place, and to lay my bones there. I left it in 1723 ; I visited it 
in 1733, 1743, 1753, and 1703. In 1773, I was in England ; in 1775 



28 

I had a sight of it, but coulJ not enter, it being in possession of the 
enemy. I did hope to have been there in 1783, but could not obtain 
my dismission from this employment here ; and now I fear I shall 
never have that happiness." 

And he never did again enjoy that happiness. A few years more of 
pain and sutiering, sustained with an undaunted courage, and relieved 
by a persevering and unwearied attention to every private and every 
public claim, — a few years more of pain and suffering terminated his 
career, and the 17th day of April, 1790, found him resting at last from 
the labors of a life of eighty-four years and three months, in the city 
of his adoption, where his aslies still repose. Let his memory ever 
be a bond of affection between his birth-place and his burial-place, 
both of which he loved so well, and of both of wliich he was so emi- 
nent a Benefactor ; and may their only rivalry or emulation be, which 
shall show itself, in all time to come, by acts of enlightened philan- 
thropy and of enlarged and comprehensive patriotism, most loyal to 
the memory, and most faithful to the example and the precept, of one 
who did enough to reflect imperishable glory on a hundred Cities ! 

Fellow-Citizens of Boston, the third half century has just expired, 
since this remarkable person first appeared within our limits. The 
I7th day of January last completed the full term of one hundred and 
fifly years, since, having drawn his first breath beneath the humble 
roof which not a few of those around me can still remember, he was 
borne to the neighboring sanctuary to receive the baptismal blessing 
at the hands of the pious Pcmbcrton, or, it may have been, of the vener- 
able Willard. More than sixty-six years have elapsed since his death. 

He has not, — I need not say he has not, — been unremembered or 
unhonored during this long interval. The Street which bears his name, 
— with the graceful Urn in its centre, and the old Subscription Library 
at its side, — was a worthy tribute to his memory for the day in which it 
was laid out. The massive stone which has replaced the crumbling 
tablet over the grave of his father and mother, is a memorial i\hich he 
himself would have valued more than anything which could have been 
done for his own commemoration. The numerous Libraries, Lyceums, 
Institutes and Societies of every sort, which have adopted his name as 
their most cherished designation, are witnesses to his worth, whose 
testimony would have been peculiarlwprized by him. Nor should it 
be forgotten, on this occasion, that within a year or tw5 past, a beau- 
tiful Shall of polished granite, witji a brief but most appropriate and 
comprehensive inscription, ha^jj-found a conspicuous place at Mount 
Auburn, erected, as a tribute of regard and reverence for Franklin's 
memory, by a seii«^ra'ade man of kindred spirit, still living in our vicin- 
ity, — the venerable Thomas Dowse, — whose magnificent Library is 
destined to enrich the Historical Hall at our side. 

But something more was demanded by the unanimous sentiment 



24 

of his birth-place. Sometliing more was called for by the general 
voice of his country. Something more was due to the claims of 
historic justice. The deliberate opinion of the world has now been 
formed upon him. Personal partialities and personal prejudices, which 
so oflen make or mar a recent reputation or a living fame, have long 
ago passed away, with all who cherished them. The great Posthu- 
mous Tribunal of two whole generations of men, — less fallible than 
that to which Antiquity appealed, — has sat in solemn judgment 
upon his character and career. The calm, dispassionate Muse 
of History, — not overlooking errors which he himself was ever 
earliest in regretting, nor ascribing to him any fabulous exemption 
from frailties and infirmities which he was never backward in ac- 
knowledging, — has pronounced her unequivocal and irrevocable 
award ; not only assigning him no second place among the greatest 
and worthiest who have adorned the annals of New England, but 
enrolling him forever among the illustrious Benefactors of mankind ! 
And we are here this day, to accept, confirm and ratify that award, 
for ourselves and our posterity, by a substantial and enduring Token, 
which shall no longer be withheld from your view ! Let it be un- 
veiled ! Let the Stars and Stripes no longer conceal the form of one 
who was always faitliful to his country's Flag, and who did so much 
to promote the glorious cause in which it was first unfurled ! 

And now behold him, by the magic power of native genius, once 
more restored to our sight ! Behold him, in the enjoyment of his 
cherished wish, — " revisiting his native town and the grounds he used 
to frequent when a boy" ! Behold him, re-appearing on the old school- 
house Green, which was the play-place of his early days, — henceforth 
to fulfill, in some degree, to tlie eye of every passer-by, the charming 
vision of the Fairy Queen — 

'* A spacious court they see, 
Both plain and pleasant to be walked in, 
"Where them does meet a Franklin fair and free." 

Behold him, with the fur collar and linings which were the habitual 
badge of the master printers of the olden times, and whicli many an 
ancient portrait e.\hibits as the chosen decorations of not a few of the 
old philosophers, too, — Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler, — who held, 
like him, familiar commerce with the skies ! Behold him, with the 
scalloped pockets and looped buttons and long Quaker-like vest 
and breeches, in which he stood arraigned and reviled before the 
Council of one Monarch, and in which he proudly signed the Treaty of 
Alliance with another ! Behold him, with the " fine crab-tree walking- 
stick" which he bequeathed to "his friend and the friend of mankind) 
General Washington," — saying so justly, that " if it were a sceptre, 
he has merited it, and would become it " ! 



25 

Behold the man, to whom Washington himself wrote, for the con- 
solation of his declining strength,' — a consolation more precious than 
all the compliments and distinctions which were ever showered upon 
him by philosophers or princes, — "If to be venerated for benevo- 
lence, if to be admired for talents, if to be esteemed for patriotism, 
if to be beloved for philanthropy, can gratify the human mind, you 
must have the pleasing consolation to know that you have not lived 
in vain. And I flatter myself that it will not be ranked among the 
least grateful occurrences of your life to be assured, that so long as I 
retain my memory, you will be recollected with respect, veneration 
and affection by your sincere friend, George Washington!" 

Other honors may grow cheap, other laurels may fade and wither, 
other eulogiums may be forgotten, the solid bronze before us may 
moulder and crumble, but tlie man of whom it may be said that he 
enjoyed the sincere friendship, and secured the respect, veneration 
and affection of Washington, has won a title to the world's remem- 
brance which the lapse of ages will only strengthen and brighten. 

Behold him, " the Sage of antiquity coming back to give austere 
lessons and generous examples to the moderns," — the wise old man of 
his own Apologue of 1757, discoursing to the multitude of frugality 
and industry, of temperance and toleration! — Behold Poor Richard, — 
pointing the way to wealth and dealing out his proverbs of wit and 
wisdom, — that wisdom which " crieth at the gates " and " standeth by 
the way in the places of the paths," — that wisdom " which dwells with 
prudence, and finds out knowledge of witty inventions"! Behold 
him, with that calm, mild, benevolent countenance, never clouded by 
anger or wrinkled by ill humor, but which beamed ever, as at this 
inatant, with a love for his fellow-beings and " a perpetual desire to be 
a doer of good " to them all. 

Behold him, Children of the Schools, boys and girls of Boston, 
bending to bestow the reward of merit upon each one of you that 
ehall strive to improve the inestimable advantages of our noble Free 
Schools! Behold him, Mechanics and Mechanics' Apprentices, hold- 
ing out to you an example of diligence, economy and virtue, and 
personifying the triumphant success which may await those who 
follow it ! Behold him, ye that are humblest and poorest in pres- 
ent condition or in future prospect, — lift up your heads and look 
at the image of a man who rose from nothing, who owed nothing 
to parentage or patronage, who enjoyed no advantages of early 
education which are not open, — a hundred fold open, — to your- 
selves, who performed the most menial offices in the business in 
which his early life was employed, but who lived to stand before 
Kings, and died to leave a name which the world will never forget. 
Lift up your heads and your hearts with them, and learn a lesson of 
4 



26 

confidence and courage which shall never again suffer you to despair — 
not merely of securing the means of an honest and honorable support 
for yourselves, but even of doing sometliing worthy of being done for 
your country and for mankind ! Behold him, ye that are highest and 
most honored in the world's regard. Judges and Senators, Gover- 
nors and Presidents, and emulate each other in copying something of 
the firmness and fidelity, something of the patient endurance and per- 
severing zeal and comprehensive patriotism and imperturbable liind 
feeling and good nature, of one who was never dizzied by elevation 
or debauched by flattery or soured by disappointment or daunted by 
opposition or corrupted by ambition, and who knew how to stand 
humbly and happily alike on the lowest round of obscurity and on the 
loftiest pinnacle of fame ! 

Behold him, and listen to him, one and all, Citizens, Freemen, 
Patriots, Friends of Liberty and of Law, Lovers of the Constitution 
and the Union, as lie recalls the services which he gladly performed 
and the sacrifices which he generously made, in company with his 
great associates, in procuring for you those glorious institutions wliich 
you are now so richly enjoying! Listen to him, especially, as he 
repeats through my liumble lips, and from the very autograph original 
wliich his own aged liand had prepared for the occasion, — listen to him 
as he pronounces those words of conciliation and true wisdom, to 
which he first gave utterance sixty-nine years ago this very day, in 
the Convention which was just finishing its labors in framing the 
Constitution of tlie United States : — 

" Mr. President, I confess that I do not entirely approve this Con- 
stitution, but. Sir, I am not sure that I shall never approve it. I have 
experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information 
or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, 
which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. * * In tliese 
sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they 
are such. * * I doubt, too, whether any other Convention we can 
obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. * * The opinions 
I have had of its errors I sacrifice to the public good. I have never 
whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were 
born, and here they shall die. * * On the whole, Sir, I cannot help 
expressing a wish that every member of this Convention, who may 
still have objections to it, would with me on this occasion doubt a 
little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put 
his name to this instrument." 

Upon this speech, followed by a distinct motion to that effect, 
Hamilton and Madison, and Rufus King and Roger Sherman, and the 
Monises of Pennsylvania, and the Pinckneys of South Carolina, and 
tlie rest of that august assembly, with Washington at their liead, on 
the 17th day of September, 1787, subscribed their names to the Con- 



27 

Btitution under which we live. And Mr. Madison tells us, that whilst 
the last members were signing it, Dr. Franklin, looking towards the 
President's chair, at the back of which an imago of the sun happened 
to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had 
found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. 
" I have (said he) often and often in the course of the session, and of 
the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that 
behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising 
or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is 
a rising and not a setting sun." 

Yes, venerated Sage, privileged to live on 



* Till old experience did attain 
To something of prophetic strain,' — 



yes, that was indeed a rising Sun, " coming forth as a bridegroom out 
of his chamber, and rejoicing as a giant to run his course." And a 
glorious course he has run, enlightening and illuminating, not our 
own land only, but every land on the wide surface of the earth, — 
" and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." God, in his in- 
finite mercy, grant that by no failure of his blessing or of our 
prayers, of his grace or of our gratitude, of his protection or of our 
patriotism, that Sun may be seen, while it has yet hardly entered on its 
meridian pathway, shooting madly from its sphere and hastening to go 
down in blackness or in blood, leaving the world in darkness and free- 
dom in despair! And may the visible presence of the Great Bos- 
TONiAN, restored once more to our sight, by something more than a 
fortunate coincidence, in this hour of our Country's peril, serve not 
merely to ornament our streets, or to commemorate his services, or 
even to signalize our own gratitude, — but to impress afresh, day by 
day, and hour by hour, upon the hearts of every man and woman and 
child who shall gaze upon it, a deeper sense of the value of that 
Liberty, that Independence, that Union and that Constitution, for all 
of which he was so early, so constant, and so successful a laborer ! 

Fellow-Citizens, the Statue which has now received your reiterated 
acclamations, owes its origin to the Mechanics of Boston, and espe- 
cially to the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Asssociation. Or, if 
any fortunate word of another may be remembered as having suggested 
it, tiiat word was uttered in their service, and by one who is proud to be 
counted among the honorary members of their fraternity. The Mer- 
chants and business men of our City, members of the learned pro- 
fessions, and great numbers of all classes of the community, came 
nobly to their aid, and in various sums, large and small, contributed 
to the cost of the work. Honor and thanks to them all ! 

But honor and tlianlis this day, especially, to the gifted native 



28 

Artist, — Richard S. Greenough, — who has so admirably conceived the 
character, and so exquisitely wrought out the design, committed to him ! 

Honor, too, to Mr. Ames, and the skillful Mechanics of the Foundry 
at Chicopee, by whom it has been so successfully and brilliantly cast ! 
Nor let the Sanborns and Carews be forgotten, by whom the massive 
granite has been hewn, and the native Verd Antique so beautifully 
shaped and polished. 

It only remains for me, Fellow-Citizens, as Chairman of the Sub- 
Committee under whose immediate direction the Statue lias been de- 
signed and executed, — a service in the discharge of which I acknowl- 
edge an especial obligation to the President, Vice-President, Treas- 
urer and Secretary of the Mechanic Association, and to Mr. John H. 
Thorndike and Mr. John Cowdin among its active members; — to those 
eminent mechanics, inventors and designers, Blanchard, Tufts, Smith 
and Hooper; — to Dr. Jacob Bigelow, President of the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences; to Mr. Prescott, the Historian; to 
Mr. Henry Greenough, the Architect, — to whom we are indebted 
for the design of the pedestal ; to Mr. Thomas G. Appleton and 
Mr. Epes Sargent, cherished friends of art and of artists, one of 
them absent to-day, but not forgotten ; to Edward Everett and Jared 
Sparks, whose names are so honorably and indissolubly associated 
with the noblest illustration of both Franklin and Washington ; to 
David Sears, among the living, and to Abbott Lawrence, among the 
lamented dead, whose liberal and enlightened patronage of every 
good work will be always fresh in the remembrance of every true Bos- 
tonian ; — it only remains for me, as the organ of a Committee thus 
composed and thus aided, to deliver up the finished work to my excel- 
lent friend, Mr. Frederick W. Lincoln, Jr., who, as Chairman of the 
General Committee, — after the Ode of Welcome, written by our Bos- 
ton Printer-Poet, James T. Fields, shall have been sung by the Children 
of the Schools, — will designate the disposition of the Statue which has 
been finally agreed upon in behalf of the subscribers. 

Sir, to you as President of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic 
Association, and as Chairman, ex-qfficio, of the Committee of Fifty 
appointed under their auspices, — yourself, I am glad at tliis hour to 
remember, a direct and worthy descendant of that patriot Mechanic 
of the Revolution, Paul Revere — I now present the work which your 
Association intrusted to our cliarge, — hoping that it may not be counted 
unworthy to conmiemorate tlio great forerunner and exemplar of those 
intelligent and patriotic Boston Mechanics, who have been for so many 
years past among the proudest ornaments and best defenders of our 
beloved City, and to whom we so confidently look, not merely to pro- 
mote and build up its material interests, but to sustain and advance its 
moral, religious, charitable and civil institutions in all time to come ! 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 769 747 2( 



